(photo by Mitchell Layton)

We know what you’re thinking. Right about now, you’re saying to yourself:

“Say it ain’t so. Tell us that it was all a bad dream and that the Washington Capitals didn’t just become the first team in NHL history to blow a three-games-to-one lead against an eighth-seeded opponent. Please, say something to help it all make sense now that the Montreal Canadiens are moving on to the second round while the Caps are sent packing way earlier than anyone around town could have possibly conceived.”

Well, we’re hurting just as much as the rest of you, but we’ll do our best to explain how things spiraled out of control for the best regular-season team in Capitals history.

For starters, lets take a quick peek at the numbers.

For the series, the Capitals fired 576 shots. Of those, 292 were on net. That means 284 were not. Canadiens players blocked 182 shots during the series and Capitals shooters missed the net completely 102 times. Montreal players did such a solid job of getting in the way and clogging up the shooting lanes on defense, that the Caps started to settle for long-range shots. Couple that with an overall lack of players willing to crash the net and suddenly Habs goalie Jaroslav Halak’s job just got a lot easier.

We’re not taking anything away from the guy, because Halak was clearly one of the best performers in this seven-game battle. But far too often he had a clear line of sight on a puck being fired from the space in between the faceoff circle and the blueline. It doesn’t matter how talented your shooters are, if you’re giving an NHL goalie that much time and space to locate and lock in on the puck, most of them are going to make the save. In related news, Halak stopped 131 of 134 shots in the final three games.

In Game 7, Halak made 41 saves. His Montreal teammates blocked another 41 Capitals’ shots. On the other side of the rink, the Canadiens finished the game with just 16 shots on goal, but scored twice. Sure, Halak outplayed Capitals goalie Semyon Varlamov throughout most of the series, but that’s not the point. Quality trumps quantity every time.

If Montreal’s offense happily settled for wrist shots from the blueline with no one camped out in front of the net, then Varlamov would have become the impenetrable force making 100 saves at a time. But the Montreal offense picked its spots and whenever possible, drove to the net. They didn’t create nearly as many scoring chances as Washington, but the degree of difficulty on the shots Varlamov faced versus that of Halak wasn’t even close.

Look, the primary reason the Washington Wizards failed isn’t because their best players brought firearms to the locker room. No, it’s because their offense was fundamentally flawed. With a core group of Gilbert Arenas, Antawn Jamison and Caron Butler, the Wizards were a team of jump shooters who were below average on defense. As long as their 20-footers dropped, they could hang around in a playoff series. But whenever the opposing team committed to defense, the Wizards couldn’t keep up.

There’s no denying that the Capitals are a much more talented team than the Wizards, and hockey is definitely a different animal than basketball. But you can still see our point: teams that settle for long-range shots on offense and don’t make defense a priority simply cannot win in the postseason. Halak might turn out to be a fine goaltender, but Washington’s passive offense transformed the goalie with the shaky water bottle into the second coming of Patrick Roy.

Sure, players like Mike Knuble, Brooks Laich and Eric Fehr attempted to crash the net on a fairly regular basis, but that’s a mindset that everyone in the lineup needed to commit to. When players such as Alexander Semin, Brendan Morrison and Tomas Fleischmann refused, the offense became stale, stagnant and predictable. Add in defensemen Mike Green and Joe Corvo and suddenly you’ve got an entire line of players who were slumping because of poor decision making.

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(photo by Jim McIsaac)

If you’ve just recently jumped on this Washington Capitals bandwagon (hence forth referred to as “pulling a Mike Wise“), there’s something you should know about your new favorite team as they head into tonight’s decisive game against the Montreal Canadiens – the Caps are just 2-6 lifetime in Game 7’s.

No sense in sugar coating it. No reason to beat around the bush. When the season is on the line, history shows that the Capitals fail to get the job done more often than not.

We point this out so that you, as the new guy on the block, can better understand the sheer panic surrounding a Capitals team that just finished the most successful regular season in franchise history.

You’ve undoubtedly looked around and wondered to yourself, “Why are so many Caps fans racing to throw themselves off of the nearest tall building? It’s not like Montreal has won anything yet.”

And that’s the beauty of being a newbie – you’re still in the infant stage of your Caps fandom. You’re too innocent too know any better. You haven’t been around long enough to know that the most dangerous thing a Capitals team can have (outside of a mentally-unstable Chris Simon) is a three-game-to-one lead.

Three different times in franchise history the Capitals have led an opponent three games to one and managed to lose the series. Right about now is when you start to second-guess your decision to “Rock the Red.” Trust us, we’ve all been there. But like a fat kid loves cake, we never stay away from the Caps for very long.

Not only are the Capitals 2-6 all-time in Game 7s, but they’re a mere 2-5 when playing those deciding games at home. So much for home-ice advantage.

Those individuals who prefer to focus on the positives can take solace in this – one of those two Game 7 wins came just last season, when the Capitals defeated the New York Rangers in the Eastern Conference quarterfinals. It’s also worth nothing that the Caps are 6-2 when facing elimination in the playoffs under coach Bruce Boudreau. If there’s anyone who can lead this team to victory during a Game 7, it’s Boudreau. (Or at least that’s the story we’re telling.)

Before 2008, it had been 13 years since the Capitals played in a Game 7. And of course, this is the fourth-straight series the Caps have needed a Game 7 to determine a winner (with Washington going 1-2 in these pivotal matchups the last two seasons). Sometimes you want to pull this current incarnation of the Capitals aside and say, “You know, just because it’s a best-of-seven series doesn’t mean you actually have to play all seven games.” But we digress.

In order to best prepare you for what will in all likelihood be a tightly-contested matchup (five of the eight Game 7’s in franchise history were decided by one goal), here’s a look back at each of those eight series:

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(photo by Richard Wolowicz)

“You think you can win on talent alone? Gentlemen, you don’t have enough talent to win on talent alone.” – Herb Brooks

When we said we hoped the Washington Capitals went deep into the playoffs, this wasn’t exactly what we had in mind.

Thanks largely to too many players thinking and playing individually rather than as a team, the Capitals will now host the Montreal Canadiens at the Verizon Center Wednesday night for a seventh and deciding game.

It’s do or die. Win or go home. Get it together or join the San Jose Sharks as a great regular-season team that falls apart in the postseason. This is the part where Tony Kornheiser, if he still wrote, would bust out the “Choking dogs” label.

That’s what happens when the Capitals go up three games to one against the eighth-seeded Canadiens and fail to put away a lesser opponent. The Caps are clearly the more talented team. Anyone who compares the regular-season statistics and accomplishments of the two teams can see that.

But the reason this series is still going and the reason Montreal has all of the momentum is that they’re the ones playing as a team. Every player on the Canadiens’ roster is on the same page. They’re all working together and doing the little things that matter in the playoffs – namely, finishing checks and crashing the net.

And then there’s the Capitals. While top-line players such as Alex Ovechkin, Nicklas Backstrom and Mike Knuble have led by example and role-players like Boyd Gordon, Jason Chimera and Eric Fehr have earned their keep, too many other guys are missing in action.

Look, we fully understand why Caps coach Bruce Boudreau feels compelled to stand by his players as they try to work through a slump. Guys like Alexander Semin, Mike Green and Tomas Fleischmann played a huge role in one of the most successful regular seasons in franchise history, so it makes sense Boudreau isn’t in a hurry to turn his back on the talented trio.

But it’s a completely different situation when Boudreau continually marches out those three in key situations. That’s not honorable, it’s foolish.

Take for example the powerplay. If you haven’t noticed, everything about the powerplay is broken. During the regular season, the Caps converted more than 25 percent of their extra-man advantages.

Against Montreal, they’ve been painfully pitiful on the man advantage – scoring just once in 30 chances, largely because guys like Semin and Green are out there every time a Canadiens player heads to the penalty box.

As a unit, the Caps are passing too much and settling for long-range, low-percentage shots on the powerplay. Sure, it sounds great to have 50 or more shots in a game, but how many of them truly challenged Canadiens goalie Jaroslav Halak?

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(photo by Brian Murphy)

In a record-breaking season full of “firsts,” the Washington Capitals had a chance to once again reach a new milestone in Game 5 against the Montreal Canadiens last Friday.

That game presented this incarnation of the Capitals with their first opportunity to close out an opponent. Sure, they’ve won playoff series before, but in each of the last two seasons, those series wins have come with Washington battling back after facing elimination.

This time around, the Capitals led three-games-to-one and had the chance to send the Canadiens back to Montreal while also earning a few extra days of rest before advancing to the second round.

Unfortunately, the Capitals came out flat at home (once again), fell behind early (once again) and did more to lose a game than their opponent did to win it (once again). The Caps fell behind 2-0 in the first seven minutes and never battled back, losing to the Habs in frustrating fashion 2-1.

Now, the series heads back to Montreal for a pivotal Game 6 tonight.

After Game 5, Capitals coach Bruce Boudreau was seething. Sure, the guy has worn his heart on his sleeve on previous occasions, but this seemed different.

“We’re not getting 20 guys playing,” Boudreau said in his post-game press conference. “We’re getting 13 and 14 guys every night, rather than everybody coming to play. Tonight we had five or six passengers again.”

Boudreau backed off that stance the following day.

“That was the coach’s frustration,” he said. “My assistants were coming up to me and saying, ‘Relax’. I was a little too hot-headed last night.”

But here’s the thing – Boudreau is right. There are definitely a handful of players who simply aren’t carrying their weight right now.

The biggest bull’s eye falls on enigmatic forward Alexander Semin. We often joke that Semin is the NHL equivalent of Two Face of Batman fame, with his Good Sasha/Bad Sasha act.

When he’s on his game, few players in the entire league are as talented as Semin. But when he’s having an off night, Semin is also a game changer – but not in a good way.

Usual indicators that Bad Sasha is in the house include getting overly cute with the puck, selfish penalties in the offensive zone and a steadfast refusal to go anywhere near the net for fear of physical contact. During this postseason though, Semin has added a new wrinkle – happily forcing low-percentage shots on net from bad locations.

Through five games, Semin has just one assist. He’s got no goals, even though he leads Washington in shots fired with 29 and currently ranks 13th on the team in points.

If Boudreau wanted to minimize Semin’s negative impact without making radical changes to the lineup, he should consider pairing him on a line with center Brendan Morrison and forward Tomas Fleischmann. If nothing else, it would put all of the underachievers on one line to keep them from bringing down the guys who are actually earning their paychecks in this series.

Boudreau won’t take Semin out of the lineup, but he should strongly consider inserting scrappy forward Scott Walker and gritty center David Steckel into the lineup in favor of Fleischmann and Morrison.

Who knows? Walker and Steckel could very well provide the jolt needed to close out this series while a night off might be exactly what the doctor ordered for Fleischmann and Morrison.

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(Associated Press photo)

For the second year in a row, the Washington Redskins didn’t screw it up on draft day. While this hardly qualifies as an official trend just yet, ‘Skins fans might just have some reason for cautious optimism.

We all knew that sweeping changes were needed after a 4-12 season in which the Redskins rarely went into Sundays with a legitimate chance at victory, and that’s exactly what we’ve seen.

You can’t fire your owner, but everyone else in a position of authority has been (or will soon be) let go. General manager Vinny Cerrato? Gone and replaced by the competent Bruce Allen. Head coach Jim Zorn? Mercifully, he too was relieved of his duties and replaced by two-time Super Bowl winner, Mike Shanahan. Quarterback Jason Campbell? He’s still around for now, although folks say his house is already on the market and the team will ultimately release him if they don’t get a suitable trade offer. Oh, and he’s been replaced by Donovan F. McNabb, a guy with a much more impressive resume.

But the team didn’t just need to change their personnel; they needed to change the culture of losing and the flawed mindset at Redskins Park. The front office needed to stop handing out five-year, $25-million contracts to every free agent with name recognition and stop shooting their wad on draft day on glamour picks instead of positions of need.

Basically, they needed to stop trying to sell jerseys and start trying to build a solid foundation.

In the hours leading up to the first-ever primetime NFL draft, word on the street was that the Redskins had locked their sights on Tennessee safety Eric Berry.

Look, there’s no denying that Berry is a consensus top-four talent in this particular draft. His game-changing abilities have been compared to those of Baltimore safety Ed Reed, who we can all agree is one of the premiere defensive players in the NFL over the last decade or so. But Berry, simply put, is a luxury the Redskins couldn’t afford.

Last season, the offensive line was pitiful. The Redskins went into the season banking on Stephon Heyer, “Big” Mike Williams and Jeremy Bridges and none of them were any good. Ask Campbell, running back Clinton Portis or any other skill player on the offensive side of the ball just how bad the offensive line was last year.

Campbell, who was sacked 43 times, told us at one point last season that he rarely had time to look past his first read. Basically, in his mind, if his primary target wasn’t open, then the play was dead in the water.

Trying to run behind that porous offensive line also ended Portis’ season prematurely, when he got K.O.ed against the Atlanta Falcons midway through the season. And once Portis went down, so did any hope of a running game (the Redskins running attack finished 27th in the league last year). We could go on, but honestly, it’s too depressing.

Here we are a year later and not much has changed on the offensive line. Sure, Artis Hicks was signed to compete for a starting job, but Heyer and Williams were still in the starting rotation during the team’s minicamp last weekend.

So when the Redskins selected Oklahoma tackle Trent Williams with the fourth pick in the 2010 NFL draft, it truly was a groundbreaking moment. When else has an entire fanbase overwhelmingly rooted for an offensive lineman to be their team’s top selection? Seriously, has it ever happened before in NFL history?

Fans get vocal about quarterbacks or running backs all time, but never for an offensive lineman. It’s roughly akin to a kid eating cake and ice cream for dinner every night for years on end until eventually growing tired and begging his parents for some vegetables. It’s just not something you’d ever expect to see happen – not with kids and not with the Redskins.

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(photo by Brian Murphy)

You might not believe this, but Bruce Boudreau knows more about hockey than we do.

Shockingly, we came to this conclusion during the second period of Game 4 as the Montreal Canadiens turned up the heat on the Washington Capitals and spent the bulk of the frame on the offensive as they peppered 21 shots on net.

The only reason the Habs didn’t explode for four goals in the middle stanza like the Caps did one game earlier was because of the stellar play by netminder Semyon Varlamov.

If not for the 21-year-old’s repeated robbery with his catching glove, the series would now be tied at two games a piece. Fortunately for Caps fans, Boudreau is the coach and not us, which means Washington is now one game away from Round 2 after a convincing 6-3 win in Montreal.

You might remember that Capitals goalie Jose Theodore was yanked from Game 2 after allowing two goals on the only two shots he faced. With the Caps already trailing in their opening-round series, Boudreau didn’t feel like there was time to wait for Theodore to get his act together, so for the second postseason in a row, Jose was benched.

You might also recall that we firmly believed Boudreau HAD to go back to Theodore, if for no other reason than to show he still had faith in his veteran goaltender. Upon further review, maybe we’ve seen too many sports movies, where a down-on-his-luck veteran battles back against all odds to an improbable victory.

Maybe the thought of everything Theodore has faced in his personal life or the fact that he had a chance to face his former team was too much of a juicy storyline for us to resist. But the reason those kinds of subplots make for such an enjoyable movie-going experience is because life rarely plays out that way. If it did, then there’d be no need to go see Miracle, The Blind Side or any other Hollywood production.

What we’ve finally learned is that Boudreau clearly doesn’t get attached to a goaltender. Think back to when he first took over the Capitals. The team stunk and was in need of major upgrades across the board. Caps owner Ted Leonsis and general manager George McPhee openly spoke of the plan to get younger and of building their franchise “the right way.”

While everyone agreed it was a necessary change, fans still had a fit when long-time Capitals such as forward Peter Bondra and goalie Olaf Kolzig were shown the door. It was as if we were saying, “We like your plan in theory, but can’t you make these two exceptions?”

We all watched Kolzig’s diminishing play in net and gave him a pass because of everything he’d done on and off the ice for his team and his city. It didn’t matter that Kolzig was no longer the goalie who could backstop a run at the Stanley Cup. He was a local icon, so he deserved the rose-colored glasses treatment.

Boudreau, who had only been around for a matter of minutes, wasn’t nearly as attached to the situation, so if he felt someone other than Kolzig gave his team the best chance to win, he played someone else.

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Judging by the overwhelming support of the Donovan F. McNabb-inspired “McLovin” t-shirt, the economy is back and better than ever. That’s the only rational explanation as to why so many local sports fans have supported this ridiculous fashion statement. In the spirit of striking while the iron is hot, here’s the next big thing in Homer McFanboy formal wear: the Mike Knuble-inspired “Obi-Wan Knuble” t-shirt.

The way we see it, every successful team has a sage veteran to show the youngsters how it’s done. For the Caps, that guy is 37-year-old Knuble. He might not be flashy. He might not look dangerous. But opponents would be foolish to underestimate this gritty veteran forward. Some might even say – the force is strong with this one.